QUounMn MaUs 



^pTiGH up in the Rocky Mountains are lakes 

 ^*i/ which shine as brightly as dewdrops in a 

 garden. These mountains are a vast hanging 

 garden in which flowers and waterfalls, forests 

 and lakes, slopes and terraces, group and mingle 

 in lovely grandeur. Hundreds of these lakes and 

 tarns rest in this broken topography. Though 

 most of them are small, they vary in size from 

 one acre to two thousand acres. Scores of these 

 lakes have not been named. They form a har- 

 monious part of the architecture of the moun- 

 tains. Their basins were patiently fashioned by 

 the Ice King. Of the thousand or more lakes in 

 the Colorado mountains only a few are not gla- 

 cial. The overwhelming majority rest in basins 

 that were gouged and worn in solid rock by 

 glaciers. John Muir says that Nature used the 

 delicate snowflake for a tool with which to 

 fashion lake-basins and to sculpture the moun- 

 tains. He also says: "Every lake in the Sierra 



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